(no subject)

[st_ratagem]

Loki glared at the journal, then shook his head. Asking Thor that particular what-if had been a mistake, and he'd realized it immediately after writing it. It was annoying, though, being asked the same question over and over again, as if the answer was going to change the twentieth-plus time. And it had never really stopped being concerning, verging on worrying, how clingy his brother tended to get, lately.

They'd been in battle before. Loki had even been injured before. It hadn't led to endless repetitions of ARE YOU OKAY before. One, maybe, immediately after the battle. But not... this.

A good indicator of how upset Thor really was: would he use the door or make a hole in the wall?

Either way, Loki wasn't actually in his room at all. He was on the roof above his room with his journal, a thoroughly non-magical blank book slowly filling up with astronomical observations and other thoughts, and a pen.

Comments

[st_ratagem]

Loki stilled for a moment; more common for him than it was for Thor, but still unusual. Most of Loki's stillness was holding himself back, watching, planning. This was closer to the freeze of a prey animal, not that he would have enjoyed the comparison.

It wasn't that Thor was angry, he'd been navigating his brother's temper their entire lives. He knew where his brother's on and off buttons were, when it was best to stand aside, when a silent shadow was more annoying than an outright challenge. No, it was more basic than that: Loki had never considered that Thor might actually know his buttons, too.

Or could aim close enough to them to make very little difference. If he was being honest with himself - which he tried to be, the better to lie to other people - fear was part of it. But only part, not the whole. "Wrong. But do you feel better for the outburst?"

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor doesn't say anything to that. He sits, sullen and angry and looks off the roof at the other building nearby and the pool right next to it.

[st_ratagem]

"Apparently not." Talking was soothing, but there didn't seem to be anything to say. "It's self-preservation, Thor. Any creature, if there's pain this way will go that way as efficiently as it can. I simply have... a lot of that way paths. It's just the way things work."

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor had spent so much time around Loki growing up. The last ten years were likely taxing on the both of him. He'd mourned his brother twice, and now was mourning him a third time. He'd believed each time that his brother was dead, but somehow this hurt more than anything. Because he had seen it with his own eyes, had heard the audible crack of his neck, had held him when Thanos dropped Loki's body right in front of him.

Loki had always been a prima donna, and it showed in those moments where he died and resurfaced later in good health. His death then had been so simple that he had no choice but to believe he was gone. To believe that his brother had made the unconscious choice, just as he had the first time, to die for some purpose he couldn't understand. He played his last words over and over in his head, hoping there was some reason hidden there, only to find there was nothing he understood.

Thor still says nothing, but this time it's not out of anger at all.

[st_ratagem]

More silence, not even a Look. He'd finally, it seemed, managed to lean on one of Thor's buttons hard enough to break the whole mechanism. That was good, wasn't it? Thor finally understood how things were. And all it had taken was a little truth at the right time.

"Right!" Loki practiced sounding cheerful at times, but it sounded brittle now, even to his own ears. He stood up, carefully due to the slope of the roof and spared a grateful thought for the fact that he'd already put his books elsewhere. He had nothing to gather up. "I'm off. I don't think there'll be any more stargazing tonight."

[st_ormbreaker]

"So you're just going to leave," Thor says, finally finding his voice.

[st_ratagem]

"Unless this is the part where you come at me with that axe of yours, but even then I think I'd prefer solid ground to a roof." Loki shrugged. The chirpy tone was coming a little easier, he thought. It sounded less hollow, maybe. Less like someone papering over grief. And it helped that somehow the idea of Thor coming at him with a weapon was still fundamentally ridiculous. "So, yes. I don't imagine there's anything more to say, do you?"

[st_ormbreaker]

"No," he says.

And Thor doesn't say anything else.

[st_ratagem]

"No," Loki agreed, firmly telling himself that he was relieved, not disappointed. That it was a good thing when plans worked out. Thor would have his mortals and his heroics, and Loki would have his freedom and the solitude that was his proper place, however technically unwanted, and they would both do well enough. Thor likely better, of course, but that was only to be expected. Done was done. Nothing left.

Aware that he'd been still longer than he intended, Loki stepped carefully to the edge of the roof just over his balcony, then dropped down.